The NYTimes reports that the Fed is proposing a rule that will further protect the banks in their effort to foreclose on homes that they may or may not have the right to foreclose on.

First, some background: The Truth in Lending Act from 1968 gives borrowers the “right of rescission,” the ability to undo a home refinancing or home equity loan within three years of the closing if the lender did not make proper disclosures — generally of the loan amount, interest rate and repayment terms. The law makes allowances for mere mistakes by the lender, but otherwise requires strict compliance, as well it should: disclosure is the main — often the only — consumer protection in the mortgage market.

It will come as no surprise that disclosure violations are not uncommon in the loans of the bubble years, so rescissions have become a valuable defense against foreclosure. That’s because when a loan is rescinded, the lender must give up its security interest in the home — and without a security interest, the lender cannot foreclose. The borrower must still repay the loan principal, minus payments already made. Essentially, a lender that has not complied with required disclosures can get its money back, but not interest and other fees.

In practice, one of the ways that rescissions have worked is that lenders faced with rescission have instead modified the loans, by reducing principal and setting new repayment terms.

The Fed proposal would change all that. Citing concern over banks’ compliance costs, it would require a borrower to pay off the remaining principal before the lender gives up its security interest. That would be clearly impossible for troubled borrowers. So the Fed’s proposal would benefit the creditor who violated the law rather than the borrower, paving the way for foreclosures that otherwise could be avoided.

Judson Phillips is the huckster who created a for-profit corporation called "Tea Party Nation." He tried to cash in on the Tea Party movement by hosting a "Tea Party Convention" last January that charged $549 admission. Despite his paying Sarah Palin a reported $100,000 to speak, attendance was poor and most real Tea Party groups didn't participate. More on that here. Phillips has since been sued by an investor who fronted the money for the flopped convention.

More recently, Phillips revealed the bigotry of Tea Party Nation by writing that Keith Ellison should be defeated because (in addition to legitimate grievances), "He is the only Muslim member of congress."

All of which should cast a different light on the recent kerfuffle where Phillips was presented in the media as a legitimate voice of the Tea Party saying that the Tea Party should turn from fiscal responsibility and limited government to social conservative issues. Real Tea Partiers, of course, disagree.

Local Tea Partiers and bloggers Shane Atwell, Liberator Today, and Beers with Demo have written about the controversy, and you'll find well-articulated views that are remarkably consistent with mine. Among the four bloggers and three founders of the SoCal TRC, we are two social conservatives, one agnostic Republican artist, one Christian Republican, one Catholic Democrat, one debauched libertarian, and one Randian objectivist (I'll leave it to you to figure out who is who), but we all agree completely on this: social issues have no place in the Tea Party.

The Sunday Independent poll in Dublin says 57 percent favor a loan deal that requires senior lenders to Irish banks -- chiefly other banks in Britain, Germany and the United States -- to suffer partial write-offs on their investments.

The remaining 43 percent polled agree with the existing European Union policy that defaulting on debts would cause unacceptable shockwaves in global banking. The paper said results were based on phone polling of 500 people, with a 3 percent margin of error.

"...But it's even more serious than economics. Because if you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the Euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens."

The first winter was disasterous - nearly half of the Pilgrims died of starvation, pneumonia and tuberculosis. Many claim that Bradford's first wife perished that first winter, but that is not quite true - she actually fell off the Mayflower quite close to land and drowned, never making it to Plymouth (he later remarried.)

During the first two years the colony lived under what could only be called Communism, enshrined in the Mayflower Compact. Each person was accorded a "share" of the totality of what was produced at the colony, and each person was expected to do their part in working toward the common good. The land, and that upon it, was owned by the colony as a collective.

It not only did not work out, it nearly killed them all.

William Bradford wrote in his diary "For in this instance, community of property (so far as it went) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment which would have been to the general benefit and comfort. For the young men who were most able and fit for service objected to being forced to spend their time and strength in working for other men’s wives and children, without any recompense. The strong man or the resourceful man had no more share of food, clothes, etc., than the weak man who was not able to do a quarter the other could. This was thought injustice.”

After the second winter, realizing that the colony had survived only through the friendship and largesse of the native Americans, and would soon perish if changes were not made, Bradford tore up the Mayflower Compact. He instead assigned each family a plot of land to be their property, to be worked as the family saw fit, and with the fruits of that land to be their own. It was the beginning of private property rights in the New World.

The result? Again, from his diary: "It made all hands very industrious, so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could devise, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better satisfaction.”

From the very day that Bradford tore up the Mayflower Compact, Plymouth began to prosper. Within a year the colonists found themselves with more food than they could eat. Flush with a bountiful harvest far in excess of their need for food and having bartered for all the goods they needed to get through the winter, they had a feast of thanks with their Indian trading partners.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the leftist teachers unions to teach this lesson to your children. Better show them this video from Reason:

When Michelle and I sit down with our family to give thanks today, I want you to know that we'll be especially grateful for folks like you.

Everything we have been able to accomplish in the last two years was possible because you have been willing to work for it and organize for it.

And every time we face a setback, or when progress doesn't happen as quickly as we would like, we know that you'll be right there with us, ready to fight another day.

So I want to thank you -- for everything.

I also hope you'll join me in taking a moment to remember that the freedoms and security we enjoy as Americans are protected by the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces. These patriots are willing to lay down their lives in our defense, and each of us owes them and their families a debt of gratitude.

Have a wonderful day, and God bless.

Barack

I, too, would like to thank the millions of ordinary Americans who have taken to the Internet, the streets, and the voting booths in defense of liberty these past two years. What we've accomplished is truly extraordinary.

I'd encourage you to e-mail your airlines' customer service lines telling them you won't fly as long as this keeps up. And the travel industry (which has the clout to lobby for change) is actively soliciting feedback here.

According to the Cornell study, roughly 130 inconvenienced travelers died every three months as a result of additional traffic fatalities brought on by substituting ground transit for air transit. That’s the equivalent of four fully-loaded Boeing 737s crashing each year.

That 520 annual fatalities was just in reaction to 2003 baggage screening, which was trivial in comparison to Janet Napolitano's pornoscans and physical molestation. Napolitano's Body Count is sure to be over 1000 per year.

As the nation readies for one of the busiest traveling holidays, Steven Horwitz, a professor of economics at St. Lawrence University, told The Hill that the probable spike in road travel, caused by adverse feelings towards the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) new screening procedures, could also lead to more car-related deaths.

“Driving is much more dangerous than flying, as you are far more likely to be killed in an automobile accident mile-for-mile than you are in an airplane,” said Horwitz. “The result will be that the new TSA procedures will kill more Americans on the highway.”

I'll be canceling my Christmas flight and driving instead. If my brains end up splattered all over I-5, please be sure to add my name to Janet Napolitano's Body Count.

What began as an investigation into a minor explosion in North County on Thursday afternoon that injured a gardener has led to the discovery of more than nine pounds of a highly explosive homemade compound that has been used in terrorist plots and by suicide-bombers worldwide.

Known as HMTD, short for the Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, the powdery compound that resembles flour was found inside five or six Mason jars in the backyard of a home near Escondido that abuts Interstate 15 just north of El Norte Parkway.

[...]

Caldwell said it is not known why the renter of the property, George Djura Jakubec, 54, was manufacturing the explosive.

“We don’t know what he was doing,” she said. Both local and federal agencies are investigating. “There are a lot of eyes on this,” Caldwell said.

Jakubec was arrested Thursday on suspicion of unlawfully owning explosives and possessing and manufacturing destructive materials. He is to be arraigned in Vista Superior Court Monday afternoon.

The initial explosion that led authorities to the property on Via Scott happened when Mario Garcia, a landscaper, scuffed his foot on the ground apparently activating a bit of the compound which had fallen there. The resulting explosion injured Garcia’s left eye and arm.

“He was very lucky not to have been killed,” Caldwell said.

The Mason jars were later found outside the home.

Investigators were planning to enter the house Saturday afternoon where an earlier cursory inspection revealed such things as acids, bases, and solvents inside.

“He was apparently going to continue manufacturing the explosive,” Caldwell said. Officials will remain at the property indefinitely, she added.

“It’s like a witches brew inside there.”

According to news reports, HMTD was one of the components in the explosives prepared to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Years’s Eve 1999/2000, has been used by suicide bombers on numerous occasions, and was possibly used in the 2005 bombings in London.

The name Jakubec is Slavic, but there's no word yet whether he's an immigrant. I wonder if this will turn out to be an Bosnian Muslim terrorist manufacturing operation.

The TSA will say, "Oh, we're not allowed to talk about successes." That's actually bullsh*t. They talk about successes all the time. If they did catch someone, especially during the Bush years, you could be damned sure we'd know about it. And the fact that we didn't means that there weren't any. Because the threat was imaginary. It's not much of a threat. As excess deaths go, it's just way down in the noise. More than 40,000 people die each year in car crashes. It's 9/11 every month. The threat is really overblown.

[...]

It's politics. You have to be seen as doing something, even if nothing is the smart thing to do. You can't be seen as doing nothing.

Timmy the Tax Cheat warns Republicans against politicizing his monetizer. Politicize the Fed? That's like politicizing Rahm Emanuel. You mean to tell me when Zimbabwe Ben and Hank Paulson tag-teamed Nancy Pelosi, the Fed was independent and apolitical? Or when the Dirty Fed hired an ex-Enron lobbyist to schmooze Congress it was apolitical? Or when the Dirty Fed monetizes the debt to facilitate Obama's trillion-dollar deficits it is apolitical?

Progressives Against Math: the Daily Kos urges a pledge to oppose any Social Security reform at all.

Some conservative Democrats have started to cave on Social Security. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia says “we have to” raise the retirement age (link). Peter Orzag, who is President Obama’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is urging progressives to support Social Security cuts (link).

With Republicans, Wall Street, and the corporate media already in favor of cutting Social Security, we have to gear up to stop any Democratic capitulation. That’s why, at Daily Kos, we're looking to deny these Democrats any grassroots support for their “compromises,” and identify a group of activists who are willing to take further steps fight back. You can help us by signing a pledge to yourself promising you will never support cutting or privatizing Social Security.

One of the country's long-time rulers has been found guilty of multiple corruption counts, and he's going to face a punishment so drastic that it hasn't been imposed on anyone in thirty years, the dreaded censure.

Wait until you hear the barbarous details: Charlie Rangel is going to get... a stern lecture. That's right, he's going to have to stand on the House floor and listen to the reading of a resolution.

"Or else we will be very, very angry with you, and we will write you a letter telling you how angry we are."

And Charlie Rangel pretends to be traumatized by receiving a lecture, and the gullible mainstream media play along. And the crook will keep his seat in Congress in his gerrymandered district where he can never lose.

I'm gratified that enough Americans are still jealous guardians of their rights to have made this an uncomfortable week for the TSA. And I admire the impulse behind making Wednesday—one of the heaviest travel days of the year—"Opt-Out Day." The idea is for everyone to gum up the works by refusing the X-ray. If the TSA has to give its lengthy semimolestations to everyone, the thinking goes, they won't be able to do it to anyone. Alas, security gridlock isn't likely to discomfit the TSA much. It is Thanksgiving travelers who will bear the brunt of the nightmare—hardly the best way to build popular support for a protest movement.

Instead, perhaps we should make 2011 "Opt-Out of Flying" year. Since buying a ticket means giving up "a lot of rights," the best way to protect those rights is not to fly unless you absolutely have to. It will help if you let the airlines know why they haven't had the pleasure of your company.

The old saw is that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. Tom Wolfe riffed that "a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested." We might add one more variation: A libertarian is anyone whose wife and children have had their groins groped by the TSA.

Lin Mun Poo was arrested at John F. Kennedy Airport last month as he traveled to New York for a meeting with other hackers and to allegedly exploit some of the stolen information he had obtained, investigators said.

Officials are still looking into how he allegedly hacked his way into well-guarded computer systems at the Federal Reserve and numerous major financial institutions. Poo allegedly traded and profited on information he stole from some of the institutions.

And we trust these buffoons to centrally plan our economy?

I wonder if Lin Mun Poo got the Board minutes before even Goldman Sachs.

Bristol Palin may have had her best night ever on Dancing with the Stars but for one Wisconsin man, her best wasn't good enough.

According to a report in the Wisconsin State Journal, Steven N. Cowan was allegedly so upset by Palin's performances on Monday night's show – she danced the paso doble and the waltz – that he fired a gun at his television, prompting a 15-hour standoff at his Black Earth, Wis., home.

Palin has been a polarizing figure on the show, having advanced in the competition despite consistently receiving the lowest scores from the judges.

While watching the semi-finals with his wife, Cowan jumped up and swore after seeing Palin perform, seemingly upset by her dancing skills, according to a criminal complaint.

The 66-year-old then retrieved his shotgun, which he loaded and fired at the TV, before allegedly pointing it at his wife, who fled the scene and called 911.

The National Inflation Association posted this 6+ minute video with more color on why the Fed is destroying, well, everything. The Fed and the Banks are destroying democracy, they are destroying the middle class, and down this road they take us will eventually lead to literally destroying life as those on fixed incomes can't afford food.

The Fed is one of the most powerful and evil organizations in history. As I've opined before, they are the mob characters from Goodfellas. The United States is the bar that the mob took over in the movie. Remember what happened to the bar once they sucked it dry of all the money they could take from it?

How our government works:1) Get a position in the government.2) Hype up some scare and advocate a solution to it3) Sell/convince the government on your proposed solution, leave your government position, and partner up with the company that provides that same solution.4) Sit back and enjoy your new money.

Michael Chertoff, while he was theHead of Homeland Security under Bush, advocated and pushed for installation and implementation of these new full-body scanners at our airports. Once he was out of "public service", Chertoff's consulting company (Read: Lobbying Company) landed as a client (Surprise!), Rapiscan, the company that makes the scanners. He is now a much richer person, I'm sure. There are multiple links to info about Chertoff and the scanner company. Below is a bit from rightpundits:

And finally, like most government scandals, follow the money. Guess which company owns a large manufacturer of backscatter x-ray devices? Give up? The Chertoff Group which is a security consulting agency run by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. That’s right, in the wake of the Christmas Day bomber Chertoff has been pushing for more and more of these full body image scanners and it’s no wonder considering that this is going to put a large chunk of money in his pocket. Go figure!

Since the attempted bombing of a US airliner on Christmas Day, former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff has given dozens of media interviews touting the need for the federal government to buy more full-body scanners for airports.What he has made little mention of is that the Chertoff Group, his security consulting agency, includes a client that manufactures the machines…

And what's this about a no-bid contract using money from the Stimulus Bill?

In the summer, TSA purchased 150 more machines from Rapiscan with $25 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds. Rapiscan was the only company that qualified for the contract because it had developed technology that performs the screening using a less-graphic body imaging system, which is also less controversial. (Since then, another company, L-3 Communications, has qualified for future contracts, but no new contracts have been awarded.)

Last week I went through one of the new Rapescan full frontal nudity airport scanners in San Diego. I should have refused, but I was kind of caught off-guard. The procedure was far more degrading than I ever could have imagined. You literally have to stand with your legs spread and your hands over your head like a criminal, while the machine takes a fully nude photo which it sends to some TSA guy sitting in the corner.

The process seemed designed to get people accustomed to complete submission to whatever the government demanded. If we don't take a stand here, we'll never stand up for anything.

Fortunately, a huge backlash is already starting. John Tyner refused the peep-or-grope demand and started a blog sensation that has spread to talk radio and mainstream print and TV news.

Many, including Instapundit and The Atlantic, are calling for a National Opt-Out Day on the busy Wednesday November 24th, the day before Thanksgiving, but I say every day is TSA Opt-Out Day! You think Rosa Parks would have put up with this shiite?

"On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement," they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. "This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue."

It's not just the right thing to do; it's also the politically smart thing to do. The fastest way to lose the independents and moderates you just won is to go all Jerry Falwell on us again.

Seriously. Ed Morrissey does an excellent job shredding the ridiculous argument by the feeble-minded Time writer.

And if debt apologists are going to ignore intragovernmental holdings of debt, shouldn't we throw out the Dirty Fed holdings too? It will be a lot easier to default on the $2 trillion, soon to be $3 trillion, that we owe the Dirty Fed than it will be to default on Social Securty and Medicare benefits.

If we ever get to see an audit of the Federal Reserve, we will certainly be forced to reconfigure our entire basic understanding of how our country works. Auditing the Federal Reserve is a great idea. I hope the Bill to do so comes up again for a vote and passes.

But just as a "thought experiment", what if we were able to somehow see a full audit of both our major political parties? I'd like to see beyond what the parties are legally required to release. Those donor lists they release are probably scrubbed pretty clean by the time we see them. Therefore, more extensively auditing the Democrat Party and the Republican Party would reveal so much, it would likely force most Americans to fundamentally and completely re-evaluate their own understanding of how our political system works.

Let's just see, for instance, what foreign money really is being contributed to whom. Let's see some of their internal memos. Let's see who in the media has a financial relationship with what party. I could go on. It would be disgusting and fascinating, wouldn't it? It's a pipe dream, obviously. The fox that guards the hen house doesn't often hire an outside objective entity to investigate how the fox's work is helping the hens.

That's why we shouldn't elect RINOs like Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain, Meg Whitman, Abel Maldonado, and Mike Villines. They ruin the party's credibility and pave the way for a Democratic landslide.

If the vile McCain had won, do you think we'd have a Republican House now?

Martin Joel Erzinger, 52, faces two misdemeanor traffic charges stemming from a July 3 incident when he allegedly hit bicyclist Dr. Steven Milo from behind then sped away, according to court documents.....Milo suffered spinal cord injuries, bleeding from his brain and damage to his knee and scapula, according to court documents. Over the past six weeks he has suffered “disabling” spinal headaches and faces multiple surgeries for a herniated disc and plastic surgery to fix the scars he suffered in the accident......“Mr. Erzinger struck me, fled and left me for dead on the highway,” Milo wrote. “Neither his financial prominence nor my financial situation should be factors in your prosecution of this case.”

[District Attorney Mark] Hurlbert said Thursday that, in part, this case is about the money.

“The money has never been a priority for them. It is for us,” Hurlbert said. “Justice in this case includes restitution and the ability to pay it.”

Hurlbert said Erzinger is willing to take responsibility and pay restitution.

“Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger's profession, and that entered into it,” Hurlbert said. “When you're talking about restitution, you don't want to take away his ability to pay.”

“We have talked with Mr. Haddon and we had their objections, but ultimately it's our call,” Hurlbert said.

Dropping the felony charge is not a revelation, Hurlbert said.

SO if you aren't in a position where a felony will damage your career then they'll prosecute as a felony???

I think the overall point is - Wall Street ruling class, if you are going to break the proletariat's laws, make sure you do it against a dirty common man, not a doctor. You don't want to have fun running over bicycle riders if the riders can hire expensive lawyers. I mean sure, you'll still get off without a problem but it will produce 1 or 2 unpleasant articles which we in the ruling class try to avoid.

So remember, focus on the model of the bike, the region and definitely the ethnicity of the rider. If they meet the ruling class guidelines for Road Domination Games(RDG), then have fun, take'em out, and make sure you submit your scores to the country club's RDG scorer afterward.

My friend Lisa Cummings, an expert on employee benefits (she was one of the first employees at Dell and was a senior exec at Wal-Mart), has analyzed the bill; and from what she tells me it appears to be one big pile of unintended consequences and costs. It will be far cheaper for an employer to simply pay the $2,000 fine and pay for the employee to enroll in the government health exchange program, which of course puts more cost on the taxpayer. Behind the curtain of wonderful and laudable objectives is a mountain of regulations and costs.

Yes, ObamaCare is far, far worse than you thought. Click on over for the horrific details, including:

Moves 18 million people onto Medicaid programs. [...] Adds new taxation on capital gains, including a new 3.8% tax on the sale of your home [...] “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.” [...] Adds a medical device tax of 2.9% on everything from CT scanners to surgical scissors, to be passed along to health-care consumers [...] Triggers loss of insurance coverage by large numbers of lower-paid employees [...] Subjects college student medical plans to possible elimination [...] Healthy people will pay more for insurance coverage. [...] Health-care cost curve bends in the wrong direction by increasing overall health spending

If you want to avoid customers getting sticker shock, you can always shrink the item size rather than raising the sticker price. This 19% reduction in weight is equivalent to a 23% price increase.

As the intellectual heavyweight team of Robert Reich and Sarah Palin note, QE2 is designed to crush the working and middle classes with food and energy inflation while making the rich richer by increasing the value of their (often leveraged) assets.

I’m deeply concerned about the Federal Reserve’s plans to buy up anywhere from $600 billion to as much as $1 trillion of government securities. The technical term for it is “quantitative easing.” It means our government is pumping money into the banking system by buying up treasury bonds. And where, you may ask, are we getting the money to pay for all this? We’re printing it out of thin air.

The Fed hopes doing this may buy us a little temporary economic growth by supplying banks with extra cash which they could then lend out to businesses. But it’s far from certain this will even work. After all, the problem isn’t that banks don’t have enough cash on hand – it’s that they don’t want to lend it out, because they don’t trust the current economic climate.

And if it doesn’t work, what do we do then? Print even more money? What’s the end game here? Where will all this money printing on an unprecedented scale take us? Do we have any guarantees that QE2 won’t be followed by QE3, 4, and 5, until eventually – inevitably – no one will want to buy our debt anymore? What happens if the Fed becomes not just the buyer of last resort, but the buyer of only resort?

All this pump priming will come at a serious price. And I mean that literally: everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher. And it’s not just groceries. Oil recently hit a six month high, at more than $87 a barrel. The weak dollar – a direct result of the Fed’s decision to dump more dollars onto the market – is pushing oil prices upwards. That’s like an extra tax on earnings. And the worst part of it: because the Obama White House refuses to open up our offshore and onshore oil reserves for exploration, most of that money will go directly to foreign regimes who don’t have America’s best interests at heart.

We shouldn’t be playing around with inflation. It’s not for nothing Reagan called it “as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man.” The Fed’s pump priming addiction has got our small businesses running scared, and our allies worried. The German finance minister called the Fed’s proposals “clueless.” When Germany, a country that knows a thing or two about the dangers of inflation, warns us to think again, maybe it’s time for Chairman Bernanke to cease and desist. We don’t want temporary, artificial economic growth bought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings. We want a stable dollar combined with real economic reform. It’s the only way we can get our economy back on the right track.

Like other opinion commentators, Mr. Olbermann is a media business beyond his TV job. He recently authored a new book, "Pitchforks and Torches: The Worst of the Worst, from Beck, Bill, and Bush to Palin and Other Posturing Republicans," published Oct. 26 by John Wiley & Sons Inc.

The book has sold 2,000 hardcover copies, according to according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks approximately 75% of general retail book sales in the U.S. It ranked 1,781 on Amazon.com Inc.'s best-seller list late Friday, but it was No. 2 on the politics list.

Two thousand copies? This guy has nightly free media and he can only sell two thousand copies? Bill O'Reilly sells over a million. Some dead economist got mentioned on Glenn Beck's show months ago and he's still 1643 ranks ahead of Olbermann on Amazon.

ZH posted this anonymous critique of the current situation in the USA. It's really strong stuff and I'd consider a must read: Zerohedge.

...We’ve just embarked on something called QE2, with the association of its name (a cruise ship on vacation) a cruel joke. QE2 is an academic’s solution to a problem whose only real solution is a realization that real gain only comes from real sacrifice. QE2 is an economist’s answer. Like most every economic theory---economics is a dismal science at best, alchemy and fraud at its worst---it starts with an assumption. In the case of QE2 this is: assume infinite money.

So far the reaction is such that the economists are patting themselves on the back. They not only think they are correct---despite the historical fact that they, from Bernanke to Greenspan to Summers have never been right once in their entire lives---they continue to take the masses for fools.

Maybe we are fools. Certainly we are lazy. We are probably also cowards. We are lazy because we failed to demand real change, not the silly change that spews from a politician’s lips as easily as all of his other lies. We let them do this to us. We let them fool us. We let them put the final stake in the heart of America and guarantee its demise. We are too late. That is our sin.

We've covered the University of California pay and perks and corruption scandals manytimesbefore.

Now the Orange County Register, under a Freedom of Information Act request, reveals employee pay for all UC employees. You can look up all your old professors. Seems like typical professors were pulling in $180,000 or more in 2008, the most recent year available. And the top administrators are mid-six-figures and up.

Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly believe copyright laws must be enforced, JUST LIKE every other law must be enforced. Before being reduced, the judgment came out to a penalty of $62,500 per song.

Now this begs the question - what should the equivalent penalty be for each bad mortgage originated and then fraudulently sold off? How many mortgages did Countrywide originate that were fraudulent? And how much was that evil orange leprechaun Mozillo ordered to pay? According to this article $67,500,000.

For the sake of argument, assuming that Countrywide's transgressions are on par with our evil Minnesota mom, Countrywide originated only 1080 bad mortgages under Mozillo. Of course Mozillo earned hundreds of millions of dollars cashing out Countrywide stock options, so while it's a stiff penalty, he'll still be able to get by and won't have to cancel his 24hr Tan membership. Thank goodness a judge reduced the mom's penalty to a very reasonable $54,000 and I wish they had published how much money she had made so we could compare her situation to Tanzillo's. Oh you suggest that she didn't make any money on the deal...while Mozillo made hundreds of millions??? Huh....that's funny.

Although Hale pleaded guilty to murder, Gilbert police said it was Hale's father, Clarence Moton, 59, of Avondale, fatally stabbed his son-in-law, Darrin Hale, inside the couple's home on the 800 block of S. Modine Lane on Dec. 17, 2005.

Moton told police he killed Darrin Hale at his daughter's behest. Family members told investigators Darrin Hale was upset when he found out his wife had refinanced their Gilbert home without his consent and hid money from him.

"The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake." -- Alan Greenspan, June 1999

As some might already know, I self-exiled from failing, miserable California (San Francisco to be exact) a mere week ago, packing everything I could fit into my car including my elderly cat and setting the GPS for east. I found a sweet little hideout in the Maryland suburbs just minutes from the hustle, bustle and outright sin of Washington DC that keeps me close enough to the action without getting any in my eye. Fantastic already, I must say, and I recommend that everyone spend at least one Election Day in our nation's capital just to absorb the palpable excitement that surges through town.

It was bittersweet, leaving the place I'd lived my entire adult life and admitting, at last, that I could no longer accept the recycling, car-hating, over-taxing, vicious life offered in lovely SF but I knew that if I stayed things would only get worse. Nancy Pelosi calls it home too, that alone was enough reason to leave. The SF Board of Supervisors tell us what we can eat, read, think, feel, use. They have taken away our Styrofoam, our plastic bags, and our right to make decisions for ourselves like the intelligent, free-thinking adults we allegedly are. Is that the kind of world I want to live in? Do you? That's what I thought.

But perhaps I should have done a little more due diligence before hopping across the country to the best homebase this side of the Potomac River, turns out these Marylanders are hard core blue staters. By hardcore I mean the governor (Martin O'Malley) barely had a running mate and would have won anyway even if this were Texas and his opponent were Bushy Sr or Jr.

I'm totally fine with that, of course, because I've been conditioned from so many years in San Francisco and a Wisconsin upbringing to accept the Democrat way of life as entirely normal. By all accounts O'Malley is constrained enough not to hold a candle to some of the more outrageous Democrats I might be familiar with such as our buddy Gavin Newsom (best of luck to him as Lt. Governor!) and Nancy Pelosi. Shit, no one can top Pelosi.

Turns out dirty politics are a given no matter where you reside. Case in point, the anti-O'Malley robo call controversy. Desperation isn't cute, doesn't matter which party it comes from.

Gov. Martin O'Malley's campaign said it has received complaints from voters statewide who have received robo-calls urging them to stay home even though the polls are open until 8 p.m.

The call, a copy of which was provided by the O'Malley campaign, says:

"I'm calling to let everyone know that Governor O'Malley and President Obama have been successful. Our goals have been met," according to the woman's voice on the recording. "The only thing left is to watch it on TV tonight. Congratulations and thank you."

Rick Abbruzzese, O'Malley's campaign spokesman, said the calls are designed to discourage Democrats from voting. "It's not coming from us. We want people to go out and vote."

Listen, I want Democrats to stay home as much if not more than the next guy but that's just sloppy.

Dirty politics aside, I've got to admit it's hilarious seeing all the "We've got your back, President Obama!" signs now blowing in the wind and half off their posts at the side of the road. They wanted hope and change, hope they got that change they wanted.

Across America, the people have taken their country back. Sure, we're sad about the Harry Reid and apparent Lisa Mikulski wins, but overall the night was a huge success.

In California, it was a union-Democrat sweep, including Prop 25 which imposes one-party rule on California's budgets. Democrats own the state 100% now. I think that will work out for them about as well as Obama-Reid-Pelosi owning the U.S. government.

The bright spots in California were the redistricting propositions and the landslide defeats of tax-hiking weasels Abel Maldonado and Mike Villines. If they run for anything in the future, we will haunt their campaigns.

I spent the night at the Tea Party victory celebration and Golden Hall's Election Central downtown with my buddy Left Coast Rebel. He has the write-up and pics.

Voter guides are here (candidates) and here (propositions). I'm not holding out a lot of hope for some of the propositions because the campaigns have been so deceptive. But if 23 loses, it will be really bad for California economically. If 27 wins, it will be open season for gerrymandering again. And if 25 wins, it will be open season for Democrats to pass one-party, reckless budgets that will require huge future tax increases.

I'm emotionally more fired up about the candidates than the propositions this year. Rand Paul has the potential to be the greatest Senator -- as fiscally conservative as Coburn and DeMint, but socially libertarian and against the Dirty Fed too! He's about as close to my dream candidate as they come. That looks like a safe race. Marco Rubio in Florida could be the next Ronald Reagan. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania is another good guy, and we should win that one.

We don't have a Rand Paul or Marco Rubio or Pat Toomey in most races, and I'm left rooting against someone rather than for someone. Establishment porkmeister Lisa Mikulski needs to lose in Alaska (though we may not know the outcome there for days or weeks). Harry Reid needs to lose in Nevada. Nancy Pelosi needs to lose her speakership. It would be nice to see Assault Congressman Bob Etheridge lose in North Carolina. And I would love to see Congressman Phil "I don't worry about the Constitution" Hare lose.

In California, backroom-dealing, tax-hiking Republicans Abel Maldonado and Mike Villines need to lose their races for Lt. Governor and Insurance Commissioner. And I will take pleasure in seeing weaselly, Schwarzeneggeresque flip-flopper Meg Whitman lose soundly after blowing more than $100 million to buy the governorship. It would be great to see Ma'am Boxer lose her seat, but that's looking tough.

My predictions for House and Senate seats are +62 and +7. I'd be very happy with those numbers, though there may be some upside if we get lucky.